Stories about Economics on WikiTribune – WikiTribunehttps://www.wikitribune.com
Come collaborate with us, because facts really do matterFri, 22 Feb 2019 11:57:40 +0000en-GBhourly1Fact check: Trump’s claim about unemployment ratehttps://www.wikitribune.com/article/92936/?utm_source=rss_feed&utm_medium=site&utm_campaign=Donald%20J%20Trump&pk_campaign=RSS&pk_kwd=Donald%20J%20Trump&pk_source=RSS&pk_medium=RSS&pk_content=Donald%20J%20Trump
https://www.wikitribune.com/article/92936/?talkMon, 05 Nov 2018 13:15:46 +0000https://www.wikitribune.com/?p=92936US President Donald Trump tweeted about the unemployment rate in the US, he claimed the following: Donald J. Trump on Twitter Just out: 3.7% Unemployment is the lowest number since 1969! Claim : “Just out: 3.7% Unemployment is the lowest number since 1969!” Fact Check: True. According to data released by the Bureau of Labor […]]]>

According to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “the unemployment rate was unchanged at 3.7 percent” the same value for October 1969. The closest it has been to this rate was 3.9 percent in 2000.

]]>https://www.wikitribune.com/article/92936/feed/5Fact Check: Bernie Sanders’s claim about wealth of the Walton familyhttps://www.wikitribune.com/article/92803/?utm_source=rss_feed&utm_medium=site&utm_campaign=Bernie%20Sanders&pk_campaign=RSS&pk_kwd=Bernie%20Sanders&pk_source=RSS&pk_medium=RSS&pk_content=Bernie%20Sanders
https://www.wikitribune.com/article/92803/?talkFri, 02 Nov 2018 21:11:24 +0000https://www.wikitribune.com/?p=92803U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont tweeted about the wealth of Walton family and the payment made to Walmart workers. Bernie Sanders on Twitter The wealth of the Walton family, the owners of Walmart, increased more than 9,000% since 1982. Walmart still doesn’t pay their workers a living wage. This is what a rigged economy […]]]>

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont tweeted about the wealth of Walton family and the payment made to Walmart workers.

The wealth of the Walton family, the owners of Walmart, increased more than 9,000% since 1982. Walmart still doesn’t pay their workers a living wage. This is what a rigged economy is all about.

Claim:

” The wealth of the Walton family, the owners of Walmart, increased more than 9,000% since 1982.” An official Sanders page on senate.gov previously mentioned a different different number: “Since 1982, the wealth of the Walton family has increased about 10,000 percent”.

Fact Check: Mostly True!

This report issued by inequality.org, a project by Institute for policy studies, found that “the dynastic wealth of the Walton family grew from $690 million in 1982 (or $1.81 billion in 2018 dollars) to $169.7 billion in 2018, a mind-numbing increase of 9,257 percent”.

]]>https://www.wikitribune.com/article/92803/feed/2‘Race against time’ to fix unequal water supply, says leading activisthttps://www.wikitribune.com/article/90398/?utm_source=rss_feed&utm_medium=site&utm_campaign=Economics&pk_campaign=RSS&pk_kwd=Economics&pk_source=RSS&pk_medium=RSS&pk_content=Economics
https://www.wikitribune.com/article/90398/?talkWed, 03 Oct 2018 11:44:16 +0000https://www.wikitribune.com/?post_type=stories&p=90398Maude Barlow grew up believing that water was in endless supply, an indispensable but boundless commodity. “I can still see the little drawing that we learned from in grade five,” she said. But extreme deprivation in places of poverty, where pit toilets lead to polluted drinking waters, contrast starkly to the overuse of water and […]]]>

Maude Barlow grew up believing that water was in endless supply, an indispensable but boundless commodity. “I can still see the little drawing that we learned from in grade five,” she said.

But extreme deprivation in places of poverty, where pit toilets lead to polluted drinking waters, contrast starkly to the overuse of water and wastefulness in richer regions.

Now an internationally-acclaimed water activist and environmentalist, Barlow is pushing for a radical rethinking of global water usage. A water crisis looms, caused by overuse and unequal access. The world’s demand for water is expected to outstrip supply by 40 percent by 2030, according to the United Nations (UN).

But there is much more to do to stem the growing crisis, she says. She believes water should be available equally to all and that for-profit companies should not have power over it.

In her bestselling books Blue Gold and Blue Covenant, Barlow exposed the battle for ownership of the world’s diminishing water supply and outlined the emergence of an international movement to redeem water as public property. Her third book, Blue Future, laid out how to prevent the crisis worsening and protect global water supply in the critical years to come.

Barlow is the co-founder of the Blue Planet Project, a global “water justice” movement, and a chairperson of the Council for Canadians. Barlow spoke to WikiTribune by phone from her home in Canada.

WikiTribune: Your book puts forward ideas for a “water-secure and water-just world.” How would you describe the water situation now?

Maude Barlow: We’re on the cusp. I still think it’s all solvable, but we’re in a race against time in terms of water justice.

We got the United Nations to recognize the human rights to water and sanitation. That was a big fight. My country was opposed, and Great Britain was opposed, and the United States was opposed and all sorts of countries and all sorts of big corporations and the World Bank and all sorts of powers-that-be were opposed, but it was a really powerful moment to promote the notion that nobody should have to die or watch their children die of lack of water because they can’t pay for it.

Since then, dozens of countries have either amended their constitution or brought in a law promoting or declaring the human right to water.

The human right to water has been recognized … and the notion of it is a very important one because we’re in a race against time in terms of the declining water stock.

We all learned as children that we could never run out of water. I can still see the little drawing that we learned from in grade five.

But in fact we are abusing, displacing and over-extracting water at an absolutely alarming rate.

Over two billion people drink contaminated water every day

We’re extracting ground water far faster than it can be replenished. My worry since day one when I started working on the water issue in the mid 1980’s is that … There are those who see that whoever controls and owns water will be powerful and wealthy in a planet running out of water where the demand is going straight up, and the supply is going straight down.

What about the UN’s claim that only 60 percent of the population will have the supply it needs by 2030?

MB: It means that we’re already struggling, and we already know that over two billion people drink contaminated water every day because they don’t have access to clean water. So the question becomes, with these declining water stocks and this dramatic increase in demand, who’s going to get this water?

Australia is into water trading. Chile is big time into water trading. The Western United States is into water trading. Where you literally trade, you can buy and sell the actual water, not just water services. But everyone has the right to water for life. We have to ask how we’re using water. Who’s getting access to it? Who’s making money from it? Who’s controlling it on a for-profit basis? Who’s making these decisions? And who’s getting left out? These are really, really big questions we have to ask.

Assad took the water rights of millions and millions of peasants and distributed them to the wealthy

MB: Very much so. You can look at Egypt, one of the precursors or the causes of the so called Egyptian Spring was that they privatized water, and the price of water went up dramatically, the price of food as well. People literally could not afford water. The vast majority could not. The wealthy could.

Similarly in Syria. There was a drought but instead of thinking about how to most justly live with this drought and get through this drought, [President Bashar al-]Assad basically took all the water rights of millions and millions of peasants and distributed them to the wealthy. And millions of peasants had to leave their land, went south and a lot of them formed the basis of the rebels of the opposition to the government.

So, the poor not having access to water is very much a part of the struggle. This is similar of course to Yemen which many have said will probably be the first country to truly run out of water.

What is the day-to-day impact on individuals who don’t have access to water like we do in places where it runs from taps, where water runs freely?

MB: Well, I grew up with running water. I lived in a country with more water than most. I never thought of it. Water came out of a tap and then later it came out of a bottle.

We’re very much opposed to bottled water, but for a time, you know, it was transition. Everybody walked around with their hydration tool. Nobody thought about it. And then I started to travel, looking at the issue of water. To my knowledge, I wrote the first analysis of the politics of water.

Basically, I asked, “Who owns water?” And the reason I got into it was that I was reading the Canada-US Free-Trade Agreement in the mid 1980’s which was the precursor to NAFTA, the North American Free-Trade Agreement which became the basis of all of the trade agreements. And I noted that in the annex it described tradable goods [one] was water. It said water in all its forms, including ice and snow, were tradable goods, right to be disciplined by trade rules. And in other words, governments can’t stop the trade in water. And we’ve had thirsty American cities eyeing our water forever, right?

There have been huge plans in Canada to export our water commercially. So that just set off alarm bells in my head.

After visiting slums and in South America, different parts of Africa and Asia, I could remember coming home and thinking, “Oh my God.” I thought, okay how many water sources do I have in my house? I started counting all the ways I could get water and hardly pay for it.

I had just come back that time from Bolivia where I was in a very poor community where this woman went into this rain barrel. She had a little bit of precious rain water to save for her family for clean water because you don’t ever wash your clothes in clean water or put clean water on your garden, clean water is just for drinking. She gave me a glass of it. And I thought, “I don’t need this. I’m staying in a hotel in La Paz. You need this.”

In some slums in Nairobi and Kenya they have “latrine pits.” You just can’t imagine how filthy they are. You just can’t. They’re just dirt pits. Now you either go in to what they call flying toilets. You either defecate in a plastic bag, and then you just throw it in the local waterway there, so the water system is totally polluted. Or you pay money to go in and use this pit latrine which is beyond anything you can imagine. So when you have to go into communities and see the dignity of people living in those circumstances, loving each other, caring for each other, sharing this water, it’s so incredibly moving.

And then I come back and I see people drinking water from plastic bottles when the water coming out of their tap is perfectly clean, you know?

What solutions do you suggest for solving water crises and inequality?

MB: There are examples where communities have said, “Let’s stop fighting with each other over this.” There is a group of people from all the warring areas: Palestine, Lebanon, Israel. They came together and said, “The Jordan River is in crisis, and let’s get together and not talk about history or politics or religion. Let’s just get together and talk about how to save the Jordan River,” and they’ve done a miraculous thing there.

Of course, it’s never just water. Yemen isn’t just water, it’s caught up in all the ancient tribal grievances of the area. But when you can sit down together and say, “We’re all gonna die here because we can fight to the last drop of water, fight each other to the last drop of water or maybe we can just stop, and see if we can’t come together to save this water source for itself, for the ecosystem, and for future generations. We have some kind of responsibility here.”

So if African-American unemployment is now at the lowest number in history, median income the highest, and you then add all of the other things I have done, how do Democrats, who have done NOTHING for African-Americans but TALK, win the Black Vote? And it will only get better!

Looking at the numbers for African American unemployment, we see that it has been declining for years before Trump took office (source: The New York Times).

Mr. Obama took office at the height of the Great Recession, when the unemployment rate for black Americans was 12.7 percent. It increased to almost 17 percent, in March 2010, and then fell to 7.8 percent by January 2017, Mr. Obama’s last month in office.

The black unemployment rate has continued to fall under Mr. Trump and was 6.6 percent in July.

Claim 1:

“African-American unemployment is now at the lowest number in history”

Fact check:

This is True. African-American unemployment is the lowest (NPR) it has ever been recorded.

It is important to understand, for context, that this number had been decreasing for years before Trump took office.

Household income grew for the third consecutive year in 2017 but at a slower pace.

More Context:

A fact check from the New York Times found that the Trump administration exaggerated its role in creating jobs for African Americans compared to the Obama era, in August 2018. In response to a question about race, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump managed to triple the number of jobs compared to Obama. This was false. She claimed that the Obama administration created 195,000 jobs when the real number is closer to 3 million.

]]>https://www.wikitribune.com/article/90141/feed/8Why does the Federal Reserve raise interest rates?https://www.wikitribune.com/article/89869/?utm_source=rss_feed&utm_medium=site&utm_campaign=Current%20Affairs&pk_campaign=RSS&pk_kwd=Current%20Affairs&pk_source=RSS&pk_medium=RSS&pk_content=Current%20Affairs
https://www.wikitribune.com/article/89869/?talkThu, 27 Sep 2018 04:00:53 +0000https://www.wikitribune.com/?p=89869Borrowing money just became a bit more expensive in the United States. The Federal Reserve raised benchmark interest rates on September 26 – from 2 and 2.25 percent for non-Treasury bank loans. Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve said that rates were raised because of the “bright moment“ in the economy, a reference to the […]]]>

Borrowing money just became a bit more expensive in the United States. The Federal Reserve raised benchmark interest rates on September 26 – from 2 and 2.25 percent for non-Treasury bank loans.

Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve said that rates were raised because of the “bright moment“ in the economy, a reference to the country’s high economic growth (Bloomberg). This is the third time the Federal Reserve has raised the benchmark rate in 2018. This decision is part of the Fed’s larger plan to “normalize” monetary policy after famously keeping rates at zero percent to incentivize lending immediately after the Great Recession of 2008.

“We’re doing great as a country. Unfortunately they just raised interest rates because we are doing so well. I’m not happy about that,” he said at a press conference at the United Nations General Assembly.

Help explain benchmark interest rates…

Why does the Federal Reserve need to raise rates?

]]>https://www.wikitribune.com/article/89869/feed/0Q&A: Labor experts weigh in on four-day work week proposalhttps://www.wikitribune.com/article/89148/?utm_source=rss_feed&utm_medium=site&utm_campaign=Automation&pk_campaign=RSS&pk_kwd=Automation&pk_source=RSS&pk_medium=RSS&pk_content=Automation
https://www.wikitribune.com/article/89148/?talkThu, 20 Sep 2018 10:43:59 +0000https://www.wikitribune.com/?post_type=stories&p=89148The Trades Union Congress (TUC), which represents most trade unions in England and Wales, called for the implementation of a four-day working week by the end of the 21st century at this year’s annual conference in September. TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said this can happen if businesses are forced to share profits from new technology and automation with the workforce. WikiTribune asked […]]]>

The Trades Union Congress (TUC), which represents most trade unions in England and Wales, called for the implementation of a four-day working week by the end of the 21st century at this year’s annual conference in September. TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said this can happen if businesses are forced to share profits from new technology and automation with the workforce. WikiTribune asked two labor experts about the TUC’s proposal, and other issues facing the contemporary workforce.

A frequent media commentator and HR Magazine‘s 2014 “Most Influential Thinker in HR,” Cary Cooper is a professor of organizational psychology and health at Manchester University’s Business School. Len Shackleton is a professor of economics at the University of Buckingham, and an editorial and research fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs. Although their answers are presented together, Cooper and Shackleton were interviewed separately.

WikiTribune: The TUC has called for the implementation of a four-day work week. Is this something you support?

Cooper: If you take a look at the experiment done by the Swedish government in Gothenburg … they found the 30-hour week [employees] were more job satisfied, had less sickness absent days and were more productive. … We [UK] have the longest working hours in Europe of any country … and our productivity per capita is one of the lowest.

Shackleton: If it were to be made compulsory, it would be harmful to the economy and wouldn’t suit the many people who would prefer a different pattern of work. See what happened in France with the mandatory 35-hour week.

Would people be productive enough to make up for the loss of the one day, enough so that employers wouldn’t be losing out?

Cooper: In the 1970s we had major, major strikes of electric power workers, miners and so on. We had so many of them that it got to the point where we could only give businesses three days of power a week … and the productivity per capita was the highest it’s ever been.

Shackleton: In some manufacturing sectors and office jobs, over time productivity might increase to make this feasible. But there are many jobs – heart surgeons, workers in care homes, firefighters, restaurant and hotel workers, bar staff, etc. – where work is required throughout the week and if you have a day off, somebody else has to be employed to do your job. You can’t bundle all your heart operations, or cooking meals or putting out fires into Monday-Thursday only.

Should people be paid for doing work emails while commuting?

Cooper: Forty percent are doing their emails at night at weekends, and 25 percent are doing them while they’re on holiday. … The French law says no manager can send an email to their subordinates, to their staff, out of office hours. … It’s unenforceable, but it’s sending a message … if you start to pay people for the hours that they’re going to spend on their emails, you have to total them all up. And, boy oh boy, that would be an enormous cost to employers. Better to control it.

Shackleton: No. But sensible employers will have a protocol about responding to emails and what can reasonably be expected.

Should jobs that aren’t formally recognized, like caring for an elderly parent, become paid?

Cooper:Yes. … it’s also creating difficulty to our economy because the people who are caring for other people are not working themselves. Somebody needs to pay them.

Shackleton: By whom? The taxpayer or the elderly parent? Should the same apply to parents of young children? It may be appropriate in some cases to provide benefits for carers but this is not “pay” in the sense of a wage.

In 1930, John Keynes predicted we’d have a 15-hour working week in the future. Why haven’t we reached that?

Cooper: Harold Wilson talked about the “white heat” of technology in a speech he gave, predicting that by the year 2000 we’d be working 20-hour weeks – half the weeks we’re doing now. Actually, technology, in my view, has overloaded us. … Look how much non-productive time people spend on their emails.

Shackleton: We could all have a 15-hour week if we were prepared to accept the living standards of the 1930s. Most people are not. Keynes imagined a future where people would sit around in drab clothes talking about relationships and painting pictures of each other like his Bloomsbury [Group] mates. In reality, they want big cars, nice houses, fashionable outfits, lots of gadgets and holidays in Florida. Aren’t people awful?

One of the reasons the pay gap between men and women exist is because when women have children they’re more likely to take maternity leave and return to part-time work, which means that they don’t get promoted as much on average and so don’t end up in as many high-paying jobs as men. How can we solve this and is paid paternity leave, as in some Nordic countries, the solution?

Cooper: Well, paid paternity leave, or let’s just say parental leave pay, I think that’s really quite important. The gender pay gap is partly a consequence of discontinuous careers like you suggested – if women have to go have babies and then they come into the labor market later – and it’s also partly a function of women not being assertive enough about their comparative pay.

Shackleton: I don’t think this is something we should try to “solve.” While we should attempt to eliminate discriminatory employment practices, the pattern of male and female employment is to a large extent chosen by individuals. To attempt to make them conform to what some people see as an ideal is almost totalitarian in motive – “We know what’s best for families” – and unlikely to work in practice. Even highly paid, and therefore costly, paternity leave is unlikely to have much impact.

Are you worried about automation and the effect it’s going to have on jobs?

Cooper: No. I’ll tell you why no. Every time there’s a new technological development, we have the mantra of “Oh my God, there’s going to be wholesale job loss.” And every time we don’t get it. The reason I don’t think AI (Artificial Intelligence) or whatever new technologies we get will cause major job loss – there may be a transition period where there’s a bit of job loss, as we transition into a new technological era – but that technology will spawn a whole range of jobs we never even thought about.

Shackleton: No. This is just a new version of an old fear of change. In a free market, new jobs are continually created as tastes and aptitudes change. What we need to do is ensure that governments don’t mess up the job-creating process by excessive regulation.

What can bosses do to make their employees happier in the workplace?

Cooper: What senior managers should do is ensure that the managers they hire, from shop floor to top floor, have emotional intelligence. That they are good people managers, not technicians. We promote too many people based on their technical skills and not their people skills. If you want to have a healthier work environment, you have to have people who manage people by praise and reward, not fault-finding, who allow them to work flexibly if they can, who recognize when they’re not coping, who don’t give them unmanageable workloads and who give them realistic deadlines.

Shackleton: The workforce in the UK is incredibly diverse and sensible employers will be aware of this and try to adapt their offer to different groups. There is no “one size fits all” solution that works with textile workers in Bradford, dealers in the City, farmworkers in Devon and teaching assistants in Glasgow, let alone with all the variations by age, gender, ethnicity, health status, sexual orientation, etc.

]]>https://www.wikitribune.com/article/89148/feed/0Q&A with Marxist economist Richard Wolffhttps://www.wikitribune.com/article/88771/?utm_source=rss_feed&utm_medium=site&utm_campaign=business&pk_campaign=RSS&pk_kwd=business&pk_source=RSS&pk_medium=RSS&pk_content=business
https://www.wikitribune.com/article/88771/?talkTue, 18 Sep 2018 00:16:10 +0000https://www.wikitribune.com/?p=88771WikiTribune interviewed economist Richard Wolff on Wednesday September 18 as part of the community’s reporting on “worker cooperatives,” a business model where employees own and manage companies. The New York Times once referred to Richard Wolff as “…probably America’s most prominent Marxist economist.” Wolff opposes the centrally controlled systems that acted as a foil to Western capitalism during […]]]>

WikiTribune interviewed economist Richard Wolff on Wednesday September 18 as part of the community’s reporting on “worker cooperatives,” a business model where employees own and manage companies.

Richard Wolff: We don’t have anything remotely to a level playing field. If you go to a bank in the United States with a group of workers who want to collectively own and operate a business, the banker typically stares at you quizzically, not aware of what you’re talking about.

The same thing with investing. There is no stock market for cooperatives. There is no curriculum neither in business schools nor in public schools about this alternative. The irony is not that there aren’t more cooperatives, it’s actually the opposite. That despite a society which thinks about business as something done by an owner, worker co-ops have still managed to exist.

WT: Workplaces are very hierarchical arenas, but that’s also championed as a good thing. President Donald J. Trump promoted himself as a businessman who can get the job done. Are hierarchical structures inherently more efficient and nimble?

RW: No, I don’t think so. It has been a classic excuse of people who dominate others to suggest that what they’re doing is necessary for the economy, and even for the wellbeing of those who they dominate. When we had slavery here in the United States, or anywhere in the world, nothing was more common than to hear the master explain to his slaves how there were two kinds of people in the world: master types and slave types… We don’t believe that anymore, but for hundreds of years, millions of people did. The same thing applies to lords and serfs in the period of feudalism.

So, I’m not surprised when employers say they are there because of their greater knowledge, management skill or entrepreneurialism, or that a employee should be glad to be subordinated because this subordination is the royal road to efficiency. I don’t believe any of it, but we don’t have to argue it in the abstract. Let me give you a concrete example…

The greatest worker co-op in the world is the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation in Spain… Over the intervening 60 to 70 years of its existence, it has successfully out-competed countless capitalist enterprises in the same industries.

Two American corporations were so impressed by the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation that they pay Mondragon fees to allow their scientists to work alongside the Mondragon scientists because of their advanced technology.

These two American corporations I’m referring to are General Motors and Microsoft. They have the confidence that this is a proven experiment, that these worker co-ops can and did out-compete the capitalists they were in competition with. I haven’t the slightest doubt in my mind that given even a minimally level playing field, worker co-ops can succeed.

WT: Corporate America refers to the term “psychological ownership,” the idea being that people work harder and are happier if they feel agency over their jobs. Do you think that the feeling of influence and democracy in the workplace is just as effective as actually having real control over decision making?

RW: No. Workers by now have figured out that no matter how many gimmicks are thought up in MBA programs whether it’s meetings with supervisors, or suggestion boxes, there is no substitute for exactly what it is that corporations are so fearful particularly in America, of doing, which is giving workers genuine participation.

In Germany, which is very much a capitalist economy, there’s a law which enforces all enterprises with 2,000 or more workers to give workers just under half the seats on the board of directors (Codetermination).

This doesn’t give workers control, which is what they want. But it certainly gives them a lot more knowledge of what’s going on, a lot more ways of preparing for, and thereby influencing what these corporations do.

The irony is German industry has been more successful, particularly over the last decade, than American industry. Here, in America we’re so backward on these subjects. We don’t even know about other countries enough to even experiment with or study what the benefits might be.

WT: Where would you classify cooperatives on the political spectrum? Research indicates cooperative have roots in anarchism. Where do you place them now?

RW: Co-ops vary. There are co-ops that see themselves as nothing more than, and I quote, “entrepreneurial innovation.” They don’t want to be seen as anti-capitalist. They just think there’s something good and worth preserving about a democratic workplace, and so they pursue it.

Then you have at the other end of the spectrum, worker co-ops who see themselves precisely as an alternative to capitalism. They criticize the hierarchical top-down undemocratic nature of most capitalist businesses, and offer the worker coop as a socialist transformation of a society.

Some folks even argue that early efforts at socialism, whether in the Soviet Union, eastern Europe, or China, made a mistake by never changing life in the factory, or in the office, to not be a top-down hierarchy, but instead a bottom-up democratic institution. Had they done that, they argue the Soviet Union wouldn’t have collapsed and these societies would have been better off.

WT: Do you think a society free of hierarchy is possible?

RW: We have a long way to go before we undo the kinds of hierarchies that have been so traditional in societies that I know of, including my own here in the United States.

But the assault on verticality, and the effort at more egalitarian structures has been going on for a long time. Even the American revolution begins with the Declaration of Independence, “The truth that we all hold equal is that all men are created equal.” That is an amazing statement to make way back then, let alone now. That says we aren’t unequal. We aren’t some of us born masters and others of us slaves. It’s been a long struggle ever since, slow and with many reverses.

I would argue that Black Lives Matter or the #MeToo movement are efforts to diminish inequality and move towards egalitarian or, if you like, less vertical hierarchy. Again, this has been going on for a long time.

WT: What can elected officials in government learn from cooperatives about how to manage a healthy democracy?

RW: The first thing they might learn is how to work in a genuinely democratic institution. We have this peculiar situation in the United States where, and I’ll be generous, where we have politicians trying to have a democratic political process – voting, writing laws, executing those laws, and so on, and finding it terribly difficult. Why?

Because the unequal economic system we have corrupts it. People who are rich use their money to shape, to control, to manipulate our political democracy, making it a hollow shell of what it claims to be.

However, imagine a different economy, one in which the majority of enterprises were run democratically by all the workers. Then, we wouldn’t have an economy that clashed with our attempt at political democracy. As of now, our economy undermines our political democracy all the time.

In society as economically unequal as the United States, which looks like the ancient Egyptian pyramid societies, you can’t be surprised when the rich are frightened of any real democracy in politics. The majority of people are middle and poor, and might one day use their vote to undo the inequality produced by the economy.They’re not stupid, (the rich) have decided to use their money to protect their wealth.

Politicians who are honestly democratic, would get an enormous assist if the economy were democratized by means of worker co-ops. For those who have “lost their way,” again I’m being generous, would be reminded of what a democracy is when they could see it in action in the enterprises within their districts. It would be a new experience for many of them, and would shift society’s politics in a much better direction.

———————————-

WikiTribune did not have time to ask every question. Below are a developing list of answers for the remaining questions offered by the community.

Often, people in a cooperative endeavor will turn on each other and cause a tragedy of the commons, not because any of them are individually “greedy” or because they do not agree with the previously set-out rules, but because they do not trust the others to agree to said rules or to not abuse the system. Do you have a proposed solution to this game-theoretical problem that sows discord in groups of otherwise reasonable people?

Can worker cooperatives directly create socialism or are they a tool, a means to enable class consciousness of the working class?

How do unions differ from worker cooperatives?

Unions are outside organizations that accept the difference between “employees” and “owners,” and act as representatives for the former. Worker cooperatives are businesses where the employees are owners. There is no distinction between these categories, only employees who have yet to become owners – whether this is a personal choice, or because they are not yet eligible. Co-ops typically require an employee to work at the company for some amount of time before they can apply. Roy Messing, Director of the Ohio Employee Ownership Center, told WikiTribune he believes unions and cooperatives should coordinate more with each other. In his opinion, unions could negotiate better benefits for cooperatives, which tend to have a small pool of workers, and unable to access the same rates to insurance and retirement funds as large corporations.

If an individual creates a business then decides to add more workers as well as turn the business into a worker cooperative where those workers are now worker-owners, how is that individual compensated for the initial labor value of starting the business?

This varies greatly between cooperatives. Almost always, new member-owners must pay for their shares into the company. Blake Jones, member-owner of Namaste Solar told WikiTribune that employees can purchase ownership stake for $5,000 after working at the company for a year. If the owner leaves the company, workers can purchase it in what is known as a “conversion” to a cooperative. Though the workers will only take this option if the company is profitable and thus worth acquiring (Transcript of Jones interview below).

What stops worker-owners from using majority rule to abuse other worker-owners?

What sort of democracy is a worker-cooperative, are they strictly representative or participatory democracies, or something else?

Every worker cooperative is different. Large and successful models tend to use a committee system where a small group of experts can make recommendations on company policies. These committees are beholden to all member-owners. Read more WikiTribune coverage on this topic.

]]>https://www.wikitribune.com/article/88771/feed/1Could ‘no deal’ Brexit cause UK house price drop of 35 percent?https://www.wikitribune.com/article/88437/?utm_source=rss_feed&utm_medium=site&utm_campaign=Brexit&pk_campaign=RSS&pk_kwd=Brexit&pk_source=RSS&pk_medium=RSS&pk_content=Brexit
https://www.wikitribune.com/article/88437/?talkFri, 14 Sep 2018 16:36:21 +0000https://www.wikitribune.com/?p=88437According to multiple reports, Bank of England head Mark Carney warned senior British politicians that if the UK leaves the European Union without a deal in place – a so-called no-deal Brexit – property prices around the country could plummet up to 35 percent, and send another financial jolt throughout the economy. WikiTribune now wants to look […]]]>

According to multiple reports, Bank of England head Mark Carney warned senior British politicians that if the UK leaves the European Union without a deal in place – a so-called no-deal Brexit – property prices around the country could plummet up to 35 percent, and send another financial jolt throughout the economy.

WikiTribune now wants to look into this claim as it might not be as simple as it first appeared.

Meanwhile, The Times (may be behind paywall) reported that Carney said a no-deal Brexit would result in a 35 percent fall. This could result in millions of homeowners falling into negative equity – when property is worth less than the mortgage used to secure it, according to the Money Advice Service, an independent service originally established by the government.

The Bank of England regularly conducts ‘stress tests’ to understand whether the country’s banking system can withstand serious financial upsets. It declined BBC and The Times‘s request for comment.

But Ed Conway, the economics editor at Sky News and columnist for The Times, warned that people might be “getting the wrong end of the stick here” because stress tests are not designed as forecasts.

Instead, Conway said they “are BEYOND WORSE CASE SCENARIOS which, like caps lock sentences, are supposed to shock the city into safe balance sheet behaviour.”

Short thread: major note of caution needed with this Bank of England house price crash forecast story. Now (clearly) I wasn’t in cabinet & wasn’t privy to what was discussed. But I have a strong suspicion people are getting the wrong end of the stick here. Let me explain: 1/

Add details on how Carney’s comments were reported:

What have other Brexit-related economics assessments found?

]]>https://www.wikitribune.com/article/88437/feed/0No deal Brexit advice publishedhttps://www.wikitribune.com/article/88207/?utm_source=rss_feed&utm_medium=site&utm_campaign=Automobiles&pk_campaign=RSS&pk_kwd=Automobiles&pk_source=RSS&pk_medium=RSS&pk_content=Automobiles
https://www.wikitribune.com/article/88207/?talkThu, 13 Sep 2018 14:47:43 +0000https://www.wikitribune.com/?post_type=stories&p=88207The UK government published 28 new documents explaining, amongst many things, how driving licenses, passports and mobile phone charges could be affected in the event of no deal Brexit. The main points from these documents are: Passports (document here) – UK citizens travelling to the EU Schengen area after Brexit should have at least six months left […]]]>

The UK government published 28 new documents explaining, amongst many things, how driving licenses, passports and mobile phone charges could be affected in the event of no deal Brexit. The main points from these documents are:

Passports (document here) – UK citizens travelling to the EU Schengen area after Brexit should have at least six months left on their passport. This limit will not apply to travel to Ireland. The EU Schengen area consists of all EU and exclusively EEA countries, excluding Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Romania, the Republic of Ireland and the UK.

Driving licenses (document here) – “Your driving licence may no longer be valid by itself when driving in the EU.”

UK citizens travelling abroad – The government says you may need to obtain an International Driving Permit (IDP), as well as having a UK driving licence to drive in the EU. You would either need the 1949 convention IDP – allows you to drive in Ireland, Spain, Malta and Cyprus (and it would last for 12 months) – or you would need the 1968 convention IDP allows you to drive in other EU countries, plus Norway and Switzerland – (and it would last for 3 years, or until your driving licence expires). The IDPs will cost £5.50 and be available from February 1.

UK citizens moving abroad – If a UK citizen were to become a resident in an EU country, they would no longer be able to exchange a UK licence for an EU driving license applicable for the country they are in and may need to pass a new driving test. The government says this can be avoided by exchanging UK driving licences before 29 March 2019.

EU citizens – Drivers with EU driving licences will be able to drive in the UK without any extra paperwork.

Irish citizens (document here) – British and Irish citizens can continue to travel freely between Britain and Ireland without seeking immigration permission.

Erasmus+ students – The UK government will cover the payment of awards to UK applicants for all successful Erasmus+ bids before March 29 2019.

Mobile phone charges (document here) – “Surcharge-free roaming when you travel to the EU could no longer be guaranteed.” The EU directive brought in in June 2017 which capped the prices mobile phone operators could charge each other will no longer apply to the UK after Brexit. However, the government said it would legislate to make operators set a cap of £45 a month on data usage while abroad – roughly the same as the EU’s current cap of €50. Mobile network operators 3, EE, O2 and Vodafone – which cover over 85 percent of UK mobile subscribers, said they currently have no current plans to change their mobile roaming costs post-Brexit

The UK leaves the European Union in March 2019, but arrangements for the terms of the UK’s exit were said to be needed to be finalized by October 2018 to give time for the UK and European Parliaments to vote on them. However, in recent weeks that October deadline has been pushed back until November by the UK government.

See WikiTribune‘s earlier story for the government’s no-deal Brexit advice published on other topics.

]]>https://www.wikitribune.com/article/88207/feed/0Worker cooperatives: Building democracy in the workplacehttps://www.wikitribune.com/article/87918/?utm_source=rss_feed&utm_medium=site&utm_campaign=business&pk_campaign=RSS&pk_kwd=business&pk_source=RSS&pk_medium=RSS&pk_content=business
https://www.wikitribune.com/article/87918/?talkWed, 12 Sep 2018 06:12:06 +0000https://www.wikitribune.com/?p=87918There is no single boss at Wisconsin-based Isthmus Engineering, a robotics manufacturing company – there are 37 of them. After working two years at the worker cooperative, an employee can apply to become a company owner, if they want the responsibility. “The day that you become an owner, you have an equal vote to everybody […]]]>

There is no single boss at Wisconsin-based Isthmus Engineering, a robotics manufacturing company – there are 37 of them. After working two years at the worker cooperative, an employee can apply to become a company owner, if they want the responsibility.

“The day that you become an owner, you have an equal vote to everybody else in the business … everyone is giving a voice,” said Ole Olsen, a member-owner of Isthmus Engineering, in an interview with WikiTribune.

While the concept of a worker-owned business may sound socialist, cooperatives hardly offer an escape from the pressures of capitalism. What they do provide is a lesson in cultivating democracy in the workplace, where authoritarianism is typically expected.

Isthmus employee-owners convene twice a month to discuss and vote on a wide range of topics. Bi-monthly meetings may sound like a nightmare for employees at traditional companies – the trauma of long and soul-crushing conference calls may be enough to put some off the idea of meeting with co-workers forever. But for the roughly 600 worker cooperatives in the United States, these sorts of summits give every owner a voice.

Owners at the most recent Isthmus meeting discussed the possibility of installing a charging station for electric vehicles and purchasing new design software. A final vote has yet to be held. Other meetings have touched on more sensitive issues, such as finances and increasing ownership.

“You have to make sure that everybody gets a chance to speak, or it’s not working as it was intended,” said Olsen. “But at times, people still feel their voices aren’t being heard.”

Cooperative advocates who spoke with WikiTribune see Isthmus as a shining example of how the business model can work. But cooperatives in service- and manufacturing-oriented business, like Isthmus, face a distinct challenge that grocery or retail co-ops (common in the co-op landscape) can usually avoid. They must balance a pool of owners with significantly different socioeconomic backgrounds, from engineers to receptionists.

Olsen says tensions are rare in owner meetings, even after 38 years as a co-op, though pecking orders naturally arise.

“I wish I could say there’s no hierarchy. There actually is. Definitely some people carry more influence than others. And at times that probably goes too far. But it’s 100 percent better here than it is in other companies,” said Olsen

Cultivating workplace democracy

Namaste Solar, a Colorado-based cooperative that manufacturers solar panels, also has a pool of owners of different backgrounds. The majority are in trades – electrical apprentices, for example – though ownership includes marketing executives, as well.

Blake Jones, a member-owner, is baffled when outsiders scratch their heads at the co-op model, especially other Americans.

“We believe in democracy so fervently we will go to war with another country in order to overthrow a dictator … but in the business world, democracy is nowhere to be found,” said Jones.

Namaste Solar requires employees to undergo a training program before they can become new owners. Training includes workshops on financial literacy, business management and co-op functions. Jones says these introductory courses have helped create cooperatives in which everyone can constructively participate.

The deliberation process in owner meetings sometimes goes on longer than Jones would like. But he cherishes them because they give Namaste Solar something he says traditional companies try to artificially create: buy-in.

“At a conventional company, there’s inevitably going to be people who oppose a decision and try to sandbag it. … At our company, we just put the cart before the horse, so even when somebody is in the dissenting minority on a decision, they go along with it because they were included in the process,” said Jones.

Several sociological studies have determined people work harder if they feel a sense of “psychological ownership” over their jobs, a mindset that can be difficult to instill in a traditional company with top-down management (Harvard Business Review).

Employees at worker cooperatives tend to be more productive than their traditional counterparts, according a study from Leeds University. The key is employee-owned businesses must go beyond a feeling of ownership, and actually give workers real influence over the company.

How the responsibility of ownership is allocated differs from co-op to co-op. Many successful models, including Namaste Solar and Isthmus, find it helpful to diffuse responsibility into committees.

Committee system

Jones compares the model to the U.S. Congress, where members have chairs on different subcommittees. Unlike Congress, cooperatives try to fill committees with member-owners who have a background in the subject.

The committee system avoids a direct democracy in its purest form. At Isthmus, committees form company policy, then give other owners a chance at an up or down vote. At Namaste Solar, committees often make unilateral decisions because the rest of ownership grants them such autonomy.

“The shipping clerks might not know what the engineers are doing, but then they don’t know what IT is up to either, so it’s a matter of trust,” Olsen said.

Olsen looks to the Basque region of Spain for inspiration. That’s the location of the Mondragon Corporation, the largest worker cooperative in the world, with over 74,335 employee owners in 2015.

Even this co-op titan struggles to get employees to adopt the mindset of a “co-owner,” according to Javier Marcos, Mondragon’s communications director. The instinct to defer to management is simply too deeply ingrained for most employees. He recommends every co-op help employees realize their “new purpose.”

“(You) must to commit yourself, get involved and do everything in your power, and above all, in your mind, to collaborate proactively in the development of your cooperative,” Marcos told WikiTribune via email.

But giving workers a voice goes only so far in maintaining a healthy cooperative. The other critical part of being a co-owner is compensation. Some form of profit-sharing is central to nearly every worker cooperative, and one that shouldn’t be neglected, according to Joe Marraffino of the Democracy at Work Institute, a California-based organization that helps establish co-ops.

“There’s different elements of ownership,” Marraffino told WikiTribune. “Some of it’s voice, some of it’s having kind of autonomy or control over your work environment. … But a really important ingredient is that sweetness of profit at the end of the year to know that if you put in labor, if you put in extra effort that gets returned to you monetarily.”